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Jim Summers joins residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

With a few months before Gov. Jerry Brown leaves office, residents of Porter Ranch and neighboring communities rallied once more Thursday, urging the governor to shut down the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field.

It was not a new demand for many of the ralliers, but with Brown terming out and a new governor taking office in January, the rally was perhaps among the last chances for activists to call for the shut down under his tenure. That call comes in the waning term of a governor whose tenure included the California Energy Commission’s proposal to close down Aliso Canyon within 10 years.

About 30 residents and activists gathered in Westwood, with hopes that Brown’s sister, Kathleen, would take note of their demands. She sits on the Board of Sempra Energy, the parent company of the Southern California Gas Co., which operates the Aliso Canyon facility.

Nearly three years ago, that facility — in the hills above Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley — became the site of the biggest gas leak in U.S. history, spewing nearly 100,000 metric tons of methane into the air, forcing thousands from their homes and spurring many complaints of illness over the ensuing months, before the leak was capped in February 2016.

On Thursday evening, protesters held signs that read “Jerry Brown don’t sacrifice our health for your sister’s wealth” and “Stop lying.” Some protesters wore gas masks as they chanted, “Shut it all down! Shut it all down!”

Residents of Porter Ranch protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Jennifer Tung joins residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

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Residents of Porter Ranch protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Arline Mathews joins residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Jennifer Tung, left, and Arline Mathews join residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Ken Currie, right, joins residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Residents of Porter Ranch protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Jennifer Tung, left, and Arline Mathews join residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Daryl Gale joins residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Residents of Porter Ranch protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Jim Summers joins residents of Porter Ranch to protest at the Los Angeles home of Kathleen Brown, Gov. Jerry Brown’s sister and a board member of Sempra Energy, the parent company of SoCalGas, responsible for the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas blowout, on Thursday, August 30, 2018.
(Photo by Axel Koester, Contributing Photographer)

Going back months, the governor’s office has denied there’s any conflict of interest involving his sister, saying that the state has exercised its full regulatory and oversight authority, with the health and safety of residents as the focus.

But that has not been enough for some residents, who for years now have called for the shut down of a facility that SoCal Gas says is essential to the energy needs of businesses and households in the region.

Richard Mathews, a 57-year-old resident of Chatsworth said he was planning to evacuate in 2015 when the gas leak erupted at Aliso Canyon, but opted to stay in his house even though he felt sick because he needed to take care of his 91-year-old mother.

“The only safe thing to do is to shut it down,” he said. “It still makes people sick.”

His mother, Arlene Mathews, sat in a wheelchair holding a sign that read “We don’t need no stinking gases.”

She said Aliso Canyon is “too close to a residential area. They have leaks almost every week and that damages the children. There is a school nearby. That’s tragic.”

But SoCal Gas spokeswoman Melissa Bailey said in a statement that the company “has introduced industry-leading safety practices at Aliso Canyon that state regulators and independent experts have referred to as the most comprehensive in the nation, along with a suite of advanced leak-detection technologies and practices.”

During the leak, Brown declared a state of emergency for Los Angeles County. Then in March of 2016, he approved SB 380, putting a moratorium on injections into the facility until all wells had undergone a comprehensive safety review.

Last July, the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, known as DOGGR, along with the commission said the required inspections and safety improvements had been completed and injections could resume at Aliso Canyon, authorizing the field to operate at pressures up to 2,926 pounds per square inch absolute, or 68.6 billion cubic feet, according to the commission’s report.

Alexandra Nagy, an organizer with the environmental group Food & Water Watch, said even though the Brown administration is considering closing Aliso Canyon in 10 years, residents see this time frame as as “too long to wait for families that make frequent urgent care visits for recurring rashes, nosebleeds, headaches and nausea,” according to her statement.

She added that Brown “has repeatedly refused to use his authority to decommission the Aliso Canyon storage facility.”

Earlier this month, SoCal Gas agreed to pay $119.5 million under the terms of a settlement to cover claims filed against the gas company over the gas leak.

Under the settlement agreement, SoCalGas will “reimburse city, county and state governments for costs associated with their response to the leak; establish a program with the California Air Resources Board to mitigate the methane emissions from the leak; and fund local environmental benefit projects to be administered by the government parties,” according to the gas company’s statement.

Liza Tucker, a consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog, said Brown has to close Aliso Canyon “if he is serious about being a climate changer leader.”

Olga Grigoryants is a multimedia reporter focusing on urban development, business and culture. She also supports the paper in its watchdog role to hold San Fernando Valley power players accountable and loves digging for public records. After studying writing in Moscow, she moved to Los Angeles in 2007 and has called it home ever since. She earned her master’s degree from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and has published articles with Reuters, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Business Journal and LA Weekly. Along the way, she picked up awards from the Los Angeles Press Club and Society of Professional Journalists. If you want to get on her bright side, she loves a perfect cup of matcha latte.